


I Go And Spoil It All

by Merixcil



Series: Advent Fics 2019 [21]
Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Gen, canon typical rimmer childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26496949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Christmas in deep space is pretty miserable
Relationships: Dave Lister & Arnold Rimmer
Series: Advent Fics 2019 [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1916806
Kudos: 1





	I Go And Spoil It All

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: [Somethin' Stupid by Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f43nR8Wu_1Y)  
> 

“Do you think they’ll still have Christmas, back on Earth I mean?” Lister asks, staring out the window and the endless empty night they’ve been moving through for the past three months. Even the stars are darker here, like they’re passing through some stretch of space so disastrously uninhabitable that light itself has given up trying to pass through it. 

“Seems unlikely, if you’re asking me.” Rimmer replies. “Then again, it also seems unlikely that Holly, in all his senile bat-crappery, has managed to maintain accurate star dates. You know I’m sure he skipped Tuesday the other week. It’s probably not December twenty fifth at all.”

The supplies of tinsel on board are minimal, and mostly stashed in Petersen’s personal items. The plan had been that Red Dwarf would pull into port for any major holidays, thus reducing the need to spend any of the available extra space in the hold on decorations. Last year, one of the three baubles they had broke and Kryten helped Lister and Cat stage a funeral for it. 

Cat loved baubles, and tinsel, and anything shiny that could be chased around the room like a space weevil. He was thoroughly fascinated by the concept of Christmas, and the promise of more and bigger and brighter was one of the few things that left him remotely curious about what Earth was really like. 

“No, I mean like, d’you think they still have trees and carols and yer racist uncle ruining Christmas dinner?” Lister tries again. 

“Oh, they probably have all those things. They just might not call it Christmas any more, more like ‘day of pretending to like your family’. That was more or less what it was on Io, you know? We used to get all these happy go lucky Earth films about the magic of Christmas shipped in, while we were all being told to think about how bad we’d been or Jesus wouldn’t love us.”

“Come on, Rimmer. It can’t have been that bad. You had brothers and that, I would have killed for some other kids to play with on Christmas when I was a kid.”

“My brothers?” Rimmer scoffed. “As far as they were concerned, Christmas was the best day of the year for chasing me round the garden with a red hot poker. It’s a miracle I didn’t do better in athletics at school given how few burns I have.”

Lister leaned in over the table, which contained the scattered remnants of some reconstituted meat and vegetables along with some very good roast potatoes that Kryten had managed to whip up as a Christmas dinner. The android was currently having the time of his life doing the resulting washing up, and the Cat was sleeping off his dinner on the bridge. “Yeah, man. But the presents, right?”

“Father thought that presents were an indulgence only afforded to the well behaved, which he never considered to include me. I think the most exciting thing I ever got on Christmas was the ash tray my mother passed me so she could move between rooms while still smoking.”

“Aw smeg, that’s awful.” Lister said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say anything more forceful, because even in listing out the miseries of his childhood there was a smug smegginess to Rimmer that didn’t warrant real sympathy. 

Rimmer rolled his eyes. “It’s fine. It was what I was used to, after all. I’m sure I would have hated whatever you were doing on Christmas day all the more.”

“I was egging the church, opening all me presents in five minutes and trying to stop me gran from setting fire to the house with her belches.” Lister clarified. “Brutal. Best days of my life.”

“Sounds charming.” Rimmer’s voice was heavy with sarcasm, but it was hard to hate him for it. This was the most civil conversation they had had pretty much ever. It turned out that, even if this wasn’t really the twenty fifth of December, the Christmas spirit penetrated deep through the blackest points of space to lift them out of their drudgery. 

In the light of the red and green bulbs they had taken out of the science deck, the weird tightness of Rimmer’s mouth didn’t even appear to be real. The alcohol and the food had peeled back a layer of forced presentation that never quite suited him, and for the first time since he woke up stranded on Red Dwarf, Lister thought that he might actually be able to tolerate the man for the rest of the trip home. 

“Well, Rimmer.” Lister reached over to put a hand on Rimmer’s shoulder that slid clean through the soft light hologram. “However bad yer family were, I still kind of love yer.”

He didn’t, not at all, not yet. Rimmer hadn’t given him half a chance to. But maybe hearing someone say it might snap him out of his idiocy a little more permanently.

No such luck. Rimmer’s lip curled and though there was no hand on him he wiped at the spot Lister passed through. “You what? The booze has gone to your head, miladdo.”

Probably. Lister sighed, and let his head fall back against the chair. There was always next year.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted as part of a multi chaptered 'advent fics' fic that I'm trying to split up. If you think you've read it before, you probably have


End file.
